· 8 min read
This article is part of a seven-piece series on the Global ESGT Megatrends 2025-2026. You can find the previous piece here.
Overview: The Paradox of Exponential Technology Unfettered
This fourth article in The Global ESGT Megatrends 2025-2026 series, explores Megatrend #3 – Exponential Technology Unfettered. We focus on this deeply disruptive moment in history in which we are witnessing a multitude of exponential technologies (from GenAI to synthetic biology, and autonomous vehicles to edge computing) unleashed upon the world faster than they can be understood or governed.
The paradox of exponential tech is that its potential for good and for evil is exponential. On the one hand, exponential tech may achieve existential progress – in the form of unprecedented innovation in health discoveries, climate solutions and education accessibility. On the other hand, this tech – unfettered - may also achieve existential dread and degradation – in the form of tech turbocharged violence, authoritarian surveillance, and the blurring of lines between what is real and what is fake. The promise and the peril thus have never been greater.
The Big Picture: “Exponential Technology Unfettered”
There is a broad variety of exponential technologies – tech that is at the cutting and bleeding edge of innovation. There are up to five attributes that make them “exponential” – velocity, volatility, uncertainty, asymmetry and interconnectedness. This type of tech (including GenAI, synthetic bio, advanced materials, autonomous drones) is developing at breakneck velocity; it is volatile and uncertain in its effects, outcomes and risks; it is interconnected with multiple other technologies (tech turbocharging tech as it were); and it is often asymmetrical in its deployment– in that the proverbial guy sitting in his mom’s basement is able singlehandedly to deploy GenAI and agentic AI to perpetrate disproportionate, largescale and destructive cyber- and other social engineering attacks.
The Figure below from my forthcoming book Governing Pandora provides an overview of various strands of exponential technology, suggesting their interconnection and in some cases, possible convergence. Indeed, we may very well be witnessing the birth of the fifth industrial or post-industrial revolution.
And the reason we call it “Exponential Technology Unfettered” is because it has been unleashed without real safeguards despite the many and varied efforts underway internationally. Indeed the most powerful companies and their leaders (some of whom are “tech broligarchs” – see below) are leading this phenomenon:
“The most powerful companies, racing to build the most powerful superhuman intelligence capabilities — ones they readily admit occasionally go rogue to make things up, or even threaten their users — don't know why their machines do what they do.” Axios June 2025.
Framing this issue from the big picture of the World Economic Forum (WEF) 2025 Global Risks Report is helpful. WEF ranks “Misinformation and Disinformation” – a Technological Risk - as its #1 Global Strategic Risk for the 2 year outlook – ahead of all other risks and categories of risk (economic, environmental, societal and geopolitical). Another tech risk - “Cyber Espionage and Warfare” – is also listed in their 2 and 10 year risk outlook. Finally, “Adverse Outcomes of AI Technologies” is listed as the #6 global strategic risk for WEF’s 10 year outlook. See the WEF Figure below.
Source: World Economic Forum Global Risks Report 2025.
Let’s turn to several trends that are part of the Exponential Tech Unfettered Megatrend that help to further explain why we should care.
Key Trends within “Exponential Technology Unfettered”
Trend 1 – The Rise of the Tech Broligarchy
There are four big frontiers for the development of exponential technologies (see Trend 2 below) and many of them are being led (or some would argue commandeered) by what is increasingly being called the tech broligarchy – a largely homogeneous group of mostly men - inventors, innovators, financiers and billionaires - located in Silicon Valley and/or the US, with immense power, money and increasingly political involvement.
In this piece on the tech broligarchy phenomenon, I write: “The Tech Broligarchs are often also called “tech accelerationists”, like Marc Andreessen, who generally advocate for unfettered technological progress. Then there are those who call for some guardrails and protections and are often disparagingly called “doomers” or “decelerationists”. These are people like Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin, heads of the Center for Humane Technology, who focus on warning about and preventing the potential negative impacts of technology on humanity.”
Of course, there are others in the exponential tech business and policy arena beyond Silicon Valley – in China, in the EU, in Africa, in the Middle East and in Asia Pacific - but because the Magnificent Seven tech companies and their founders/leaders and ecosystems are mostly US based (at least for now), they are worth mentioning in particular as an exponential tech force to be reckoned with.
Trend 2 – Four Exponential Tech Frontiers
To simplify the wide variety and complexity of exponential tech development, we can look at these technologies along four dimensions or frontiers: the biological pertaining to tech intersecting with human biology and biodiversity (e.g., genetic engineering); the mechanical – pertaining to machines at the cutting edge whether autonomous or not (robots, drones, humanoids); the planetary pertaining to climate and environmental tech (including solar, geospatial and space based); and the virtual focused on the cyber and virtual worlds (and consisting of GenAI, agentic AI, crypto, cyber and so much more). See Figure below from Governing Pandora.
Trend 3 - AI-Induced Jobs Apocalypse, Renaissance or Both?
A huge debate that is currently unfolding and may hit us sooner than we think is the AI job disruption or apocalypse, as some are calling it including leaders like Dario Amodei, the founder and CEO of Anthropic, who has been very vocal and concerned about the topic even as his company advances GenAI and agentic AI.
It is unclear what exponential tech – especially GenAI’s impact will be on jobs – destroying some, augmenting others and creating new ones. The profound question for leaders and decisionmakers is: how to manage successfully and humanely this job transition so it isn’t a job apocalypse and is closer to being a job augmenter or creator?
Trend 4 – The Search for New Approaches to Tech Governance
Except perhaps for the EU, tech regulation is spotty worldwide with various approaches nationally and many efforts internationally none of which can do the job – at least not yet. If tech regulation isn’t keeping up or is unable to deal with the ferocity of tech change, what are the alternatives? Or put another way: if the governments of the world are unable to find common ground to manage significant tech dangers – for example, as the UN is attempting to do with lethal autonomous weaponry – what are we left with in terms of building guardrails and responsibility around these frontier technologies?
There are a variety of interesting voluntary frameworks being developed by public, private and civil society entities including the ones below from WEF around “Digital Trust in the Intelligent Age” and from the National Association of Corporate Directors’ Blue Ribbon Commission Report on Technology Leadership in the Boardroom in 2024 focused on organizational governance and boardroom oversight of technology. See Figures below.
Source: www.weforum.org/stories/2024/11/explainer-what-is-digital-trust-in-the-intelligent-age/.
I have also developed a governance and management framework which suggests that entities and their leaders undertake an essential mind-shift to what I call the “exponential governance mindset”. See the Figure below.
Leadership To Dos to Futureproof “Exponential Technology Unfettered”
To conclude this Megatrend exploration, how do we individually and collectively as leaders combat the phenomenon of “Exponential Technology Unfettered” – proactively and painstakingly and with responsibility to protect, enhance and further the value of what we do and the safety of our stakeholders? Below are several practical ideas.
-
Learn About the Tech that Permeates Your World and Treat Your Organization as if it were a Tech Company. Every organization – every company, every agency, every university, is a tech entity or person. There is no such thing as a company or other entity that is not a tech entity. Leadership must rapidly achieve future tech literacy. It is a survive or die time. Boards and management do not have the option of ignoring tech disruption—hire management and recruit board members with tech governance, ethics, or risk expertise and even more with a continuous education mindset, humility and curiosity.
-
Focus on your Talent Mix Making Adjustments from Top to Bottom. Everyone will be affected by the technology changes underway – which have not yet accelerated but will. As individuals, decision-makers and global citizens, it is incumbent on us to learn everything necessary about how exponential tech affects us, our people, our organization and our community. You must begin to make necessary – and humane – plans and adjustments.
-
Prepare for the Borderless Tech Surveillance Enhanced World. The borderless tech world is here – for everyone – for better and for worse. We all need to be informed and prepared to deal with adverse outcomes from some of these exponential technologies. Understand what’s on your smartphone, your computer, your IoT devices, on the street and in public venues and make the right choices to protect privacy and data.
-
Adopt a Voluntary Exponential Governance Mindset. Don’t wait for regulators to catch up - it is incumbent on responsible entities in all sectors to develop suitable voluntary tech governance frameworks to retain their social tech license to operate.
This article is part of a seven-piece series on the Global ESGT Megatrends 2025–2026. You can explore all parts of the series, including the next piece, Global ESGT Megatrend #4 – “Socioecological Polyrisks & Tipping Points Rising”.
illuminem Voices is a democratic space presenting the thoughts and opinions of leading Sustainability & Energy writers, their opinions do not necessarily represent those of illuminem.
